No One Mourns the Wicked
by Be Summer Rain
Summary: All the world is ash and gray.
1. Weakness

A/N: This will be a series of three drabbles centered on the Malfoys, because honestly, could anyone read HBP and not be fascinated by them?

Also, the title is not mine. I actually got it from a friend's icon, so I think it's from the musical Wicked, which, like HP and related characters, belongs to someone far cooler than me.

_Weakness_

He failed.

Two words, she muses now, and three days have passed (a horrid number, three; she's always despised it), and she can't remember breathing since. She supposes she must have eaten, as she does not feel weak – though she doubts she would recognize the feeling – but she cannot recognize sweet or bitter; for her, all the world is ash and gray.

But it's all right, Bellatrix had told her, the deed had been done anyway.

She did not understand how there could be triumph in her sister's voice.

And – and my son? She had not been able to speak his name. Not then.

The Dark Lord will find him. The Dark Lord always finds what he seeks.

What will happen to him? Narcissa had been glad when the tremor left her voice.

Don't think about him, Bellatrix had said sternly.

He's my son.

There is no room for love among the Death Eaters. It is a weakness.

She will not be alone for long; her husband will break out soon. She cannot explain how she knows this, nor can she explain why the thought does not calm her. He will be ashamed of her son – their son, she corrects herself, though it takes a moment's pause – and she cannot bear this thought. When they see him again – she refuses to entertain the word if – there will be revulsion in his eyes. His only son, but Lucius had always been an excellent Death Eater.

She suspects that love will be the Dark Lord's undoing, though again she cannot say how or why. She does not share her sister's assumption of weakness, though she would never dare to say so out loud. But he is her son, in darkness or in light, even with the shadows so heavy now.


	2. Pity

_Pity_

Azkaban without its guards is nothing. Lucius had laughed at his sentencing – unhinged, they must have thought him, but it hadn't mattered – high and cold, eerily familiar to some. Soon to be familiar to all; yes, he believes this.

It is dark and it is dirty, but they are fools to think that walls can hold them. All are fools against the Dark Lord.

He has heard the whispers, yes – the Potter boy, nothing has changed in fifteen years – but pays no mind to such things. They do not understand. They do not know. Some things are greater than mundane minds – even his, he admits this – can understand.

And that is why they follow Him.

Rumours of a plan, of his son, of Dumbledore. He berates himself in the dark; it is his fault, his fault, he failed; the Dark Lord neither forgives nor forgets. His son is sixteen, no match for this sort of thing; intelligent, surely, but Lucius cannot help but remember the slight shadows of doubt. Rare, yes, but still there, and he believes he has cause to doubt his son's devotion, if only a fraction. But it is a crack, a flaw, and could be broken into – but he mustn't think these things, he must be on guard, his thoughts must be closed.

Some days he thinks he might be going mad, here in the dark, even in the absence of the guards, for his thoughts tumble over each other and contradictions run wild. He is above that, surely he is; he is not weak. Not weak, not weak; a mantra, and wishes desperately for sleep, for air, for a master and a wand and a task.

There are some in here – he hears their cries at night, they are broken, they are not like him – who are not guilty; he would know. He realizes that the Ministry must be panicking, trying not to show it, and the thought lights a corner of his mind with triumph. To throw innocents in this dark place. He has never believed in innocence, but he nearly pities them, if he knew what it was like to feel pity.

His cell, the darkness, and the screams of the dying, if only in his mind.


	3. Ice

_Ice_

He is a child conceived in darkness; fed hate in streams like milk. Sticks and stones will break my bones, childish and sing-song, and he has always known how false that is. Minor concerns, really, and he finds it so easy to despise them. Those who only worry about falling. He's finding that it's worse to have nowhere left to go.

Every night the scene plays in his head, right before he falls into uneasy sleep: he had frozen, he had failed, it was only a matter of time before he was dead.

He goes over the moment, obsessively, analyzing details and dissecting the steps it took to reach that final breaking point. He steps back, observes coldly, something he has always been so good at. His greatest strength, his father had told him once (his father, his father, what must he think?); ice. Death Eaters do not love, he knows this, he's always known it, but it is only now that he has begun to wonder why.

There had been something in his eyes, and he doesn't want to wonder and he doesn't want to know; futile, probably, but that has never stopped him. Nothing has. Until now. That look in his eyes and a suddenly worthless wand.

He doesn't know where they're going; he doesn't dare to say much. They move in shadows and in silence. Darkness, darkness, and it is only now that he's found it hard to see.

(the end)


End file.
